Our testing shows that the AirPort Express is actually among the slowest 802.11n devices. Its speed is still plenty fast for streaming music or HD video, but even under the best conditions, at close range on a 5.0GHz 802.11n-only network, it hit 66Mbps, or just barely faster than the Time Capsule in slower 2.4GHz mode. If you have demanding networking tasks in mind, with many users all streaming various kinds of media at once, for example, you will likely want a more robust 802.11n product.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
We also found that the AirPort Express takes a significant hit compared with other 802.11n devices when you use it at long distance. At the 5.0GHz frequency, Apple's Time Capsule is actually near the top of its class at range, posting an impressive 42.27Mbps from 60 metres. The AirPort Express loses more than half of that throughput, coming in at only 18.4Mbps. Its long-distance 2.4GHz performance is lower still. At those speeds, your HD streaming experience would suffer, so if you intend to work the AirPort Express into a media-streaming situation, you will want to keep the various components fairly close together.
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